Published: January 25, 2009 12:44 am      

The nadir? Terps can only hope

Dogs are barking; vultures are circling; sharks are attacking, and it’s understandable why. The Maryland men’s basketball team is ... well ... not good.

This isn’t Bob Wade’s team that lost yesterday to Duke, 85-44; this is Gary Williams’ team. These aren’t Bob Wade’s players Gary inherited — who, by the way, never lost to Duke by 41 points. These are the players Gary recruited, or, perhaps in this case, did not recruit; and these are the players who wear the Maryland jersey just seven years after Gary’s players won the national championship.

Look, it’s as my cousin Steve, who has been a Maryland fan for as long as he has been alive, just said to me in an e-mail, I didn’t have a warm and fuzzy feeling about this game to begin with. In fact, had I not been so quick to tick off my big Dutch antagonist Friday afternoon over nothing at all, before he parted our company, I was ready take Maryland and 18 1/2 points today for a cold one.

I still would have lost. Twice.

It was the worst Maryland loss under Williams; the fourth-largest margin of defeat in school history. And sadly, it didn’t come as a huge surprise.

Understand, this is no indictment on the Maryland players themselves. Goodness, with the possible exception of yesterday (who could really tell?), this team plays hard; it busts its hump night in and night out, as all Gary Williams-coached teams do. They’re simply undermanned, and will be in most every ACC game they play. C’mon, I love the kid, but when Dave Neal is on the floor for as many minutes as he is, there is a hole somewhere, and that hole is the responsibility of Gary Williams.

The past few years I have been chided by some of my friends who claim to be Maryland supporters, but who I doubt really could be because of their short memories, for being overprotective of the Maryland coach, almost to the point of being an apologist for him.

OK, guilty as charged.

Most of these so-called fans, though, weren’t even around to know what it felt like to have Moses Malone commit a drive-by (which, obviously, was the right thing for him to do) before playing a single game on a team that still managed to reach the Elite Eight. Most of them weren’t around to feel the dagger to the heart after the greatest college basketball game in history. Most of them weren’t around to see Kenny Dennard undercut Buck Williams in the final seconds of the ACC championship game. Most of them were more concerned with lunch time and recess to understand what true heart sadness is, which everybody Maryland felt when Leonard Bias died.

Gary Williams not only saved Maryland basketball, he saved the University of Maryland. He brought it back to life, and he gave it a new life, taking Maryland students, alumni and supporters to the rarefied air they had only dreamed of breathing. He did it through determination, hard work and devotion, overcoming more obstacles from within than you would care to imagine, because he loves the university more than he loves even himself.

Unless you were there for the Moses drive-by, 103-100, the Dennard undercut, Bias, Lefty’s departing tears, and the nightmare of Bob Wade (who, fittingly, was hired by a man named Slaughter), and countless other twists of fate that always seemed to work against Maryland, you could never understand what the tears of joy truly meant to a Maryland supporter when those nets were cut down in Atlanta that night. I sat at a crowded bar and openly sobbed like a baby that night, and I am not ashamed to admit that; in fact, I’m damn proud of it, because I experienced something that night I never imagined I would. It remains one of the happiest moments of my life, and I’m not ready to forget it. Ever.

And, oh, by the way, under Gary Williams, the University of Maryland has not even sniffed the threat of NCAA violation. As ESPN analyst and former coach Fran Fraschilla said earlier in the season, Williams won’t even drive by that neighborhood, even if it costs him the No. 1 blue-chipper in the nation. That, too, is something to be proud of.

Yet I’m also ready to admit things are not as they should be now for Maryland basketball, not because the Terps were whipped by Duke in Cameron. That can happen to anybody, because Duke is ... well, Duke is Duke. But Maryland is no longer Maryland, and there is nobody who understands that better than the Maryland coach.

Certainly, there is nothing he can do about it now, other than play the hand he has dealt himself. Which, he will do. And with a freshman guard in place by the name of Sean Mosley, who will become a great player, and with help for the inside coming next year, and the year after, Maryland will be Maryland again. Of that, I am certain.

As the great Brian Billick (seriously; ask him) once said, “That’s why players play, coaches coach, writers write ... and you people do whatever it is you people do.”

In college basketball, as we saw yesterday in Maryland’s historic loss to Duke, coaches must also recruit.

Mike Burke is sports editor of the Cumberland Times-News.Contact Mike Burke at mburke@times-news.com.